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BOOK REVIEWS Stavanger Museum Årbok 1992 [1992 Year• shipping. Indeed, in some years as much as book of the Stavanger Museum]. Stavanger, eighty percent of herring exports to the Baltic Norway: Stavanger Museum, 1993. 220 pp., were carried in Stavanger-owned vessels. maps, figures, photographs, English sum• When the trade declined after 1870, Stavanger maries. NOK 100, paper; ISBN 82-90054-33- and its shipping also entered a prolonged 1; ISSN 0333-0656. period of stagnation. Hamre supports his lucid discussion with As befits an institution in a city with both a maps, figures and tables that present a wealth proud sea-going past and a prosperous mari• of data and illustrate his major points well. time present, the Stavanger Museum has The only significant problem is that he sel• always been interested in publishing papers dom attempts to explain what he observes. with a marine orientation in its Yearbook. The Although Hamre calls this a "reconnaissance," fact that the Stavanger Maritime Museum, the fact that it is in some ways a preliminary which ranks among Scandinavia's best, is one essay does not obviate his responsibility to try of its components gives it an edge in solicit• to explain at least some of what he observes. ing such articles. The 1992 edition continues In particular, I would have welcomed a dis• this tradition with a fifty-five page essay by cussion of what comparative advantages Sta• Harald Hamre, the former Director of the vanger had in the trade compared to its princi• Maritime Museum who now occupies a simi• pal domestic rival, Bergen. Tackling such lar post in the larger establishment. Although questions would have strengthened the article. "Norway's Baltic Herring Trade in the Nine• Although Hamre's portrait of this signifi• teenth Century" is the only maritime paper in cant trade will be useful to many maritime this year's volume, it provides an excellent historians, of special interest is his use of data rationale for maritime historians to consult the from the former Soviet Union. Rather than book. Those lacking a reading knowledge of relying solely on domestic sources, as most Norwegian will not be able to use that as an Norwegian historians of export trades tend to excuse, since there is a competent English do, he has utilized customs records for Per- summary and many of the figures and dia• nau, Reval and Narva to flesh out his account. grams have English as well as Norwegian While this is one of the first published studies captions and explanations. to use such data since the Baltic states gained Hamre's essay is a fine overview of the their independence, historians who read it are spring herring trade from the west coast. This certain to recognize the richness of the was Norway's most important export in the material awaiting examination in Latvia, first half of the century and virtually the only Lithuania and Estonia. There are a variety of Norwegian commodity in demand in the other maritime routes, including the British Baltic. From about 1840 Stavanger was the coal trade, which would benefit from such most important port in this commerce, and the evidence. If Harald Hamre's essay sensitizes prospect of carrying herring was the principal scholars to this resource and stimulates at motivation for local entrepreneurs to invest in least a few to exploit it, the 1992 issue of the 63 64 The Northern Mariner Yearbook will have more than served its experts who were willing to do their best for purpose. the users of the book. To a large extent, this seemingly hopeless task was achieved. Where Lewis R. Fischer there are shortcomings, it is the informant and St. John's, Newfoundland not the compiler who should be blamed. Take for example the institution where I work. The Norman J. Brouwer. International Register of Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum owns aSeehund Historic Ships. 2nd. ed.; Sea History Press in Type Midget Submarine which is not incor• association with the Mystic Seaport Museum, porated in the register. Our whale catcher Rau 1985, 1993 [order from: Publications Dept., IX was converted into a submarine chaser and Mystic Seaport Museum, 75 Greenmanville served as a mine sweeper before she sailed as Avenue, Mystic, CT 06355 USA]. 392 pp., a whale catcher under the Norwegian flag photographs, appendices, bibliography, index. between 1948 and 1968. Such information US $57.75, cloth; ISBN 0-930248-04-X; US would have been very useful since it had im• $37.75, paper; ISBN 0-930248-05-8. portant consequences for the superstructure. Only recently she was restored to the appear• Eight years after this highly acclaimed list of ance she would have had when she was built historic ships first appeared, Norman Brou• in 1939. Still another of the main exhibits in wer, marine historian at the South Street the museum is the central section of the 1881 Seaport Museum in New York, has completed river paddle steamer Meissen, with an oscilla• an even more complete directory of the tion steam-engine. She would have fitted world's preserved historic ships. Enlarged by ideally into Appendix 3. seventy pages, the new register contains data The saddest chapter in the book is that on on over 1,300 ships in fifty-two countries, the Falkland Islands. The pictures of seven while its predecessor only mentioned 700 vessels are reproduced, all wrecks. Let us vessels in forty-three countries. A few ships hope that some will find foster-parents and have been added to the second edition because will be saved in the near future. However, the cut-off year was altered from 1945 to good news from the Falklands reached me 1955 (all ships had to be a minimum size of while writing this review. The ex-Feuerland, forty feet overall length of complete hulls). built as an exploration vessel in Germany in Even so, most of the new ships were built 1927, is still in use under her new name before the old cut-off year, indicating an Penelope, serving Bob and John Ferguson on increased interest in preserving historic ships. Weddell Island as a cattle transporter. The foreword to the new edition was Extremely useful are Brouwer's appen• written by the Duke of Edinburgh, himself a dices. The list of vessels by type shows that ship enthusiast and patron of the Maritime "sailing vessels - fore & aft rig - cargo" with Trust. He praises the tribute paid in the pref• 193 ships head the list. Anyone thinking of ace by Peter Stanford, the president of the preserving a vessel will have to consult that National Maritime Historical Society, to the list in order to establish the importance of a late Frank Carr and to Karl Kortum. To both ship type, since it is essential that gaps be men the world's lovers of historic ships are filled. It is extremely costly to preserve and deeply indebted. The preparation of such a restore a ship. So it may be helpful to know book for publication can only be mastered by that a certain type is a rare or even a unique a man with Herculean powers. In order to example of the maritime past. collect all relevant information and to put it Like Lloyd's Register, Brouwer's Register all together in a somewhat uniform way, even is a most valuable directory for every mari• though he was unable to inspect all ships, a time historian and ship lover throughout the standardized questionnaire was distributed to world. I am sure that a third edition will be Book Reviews 65 published after a few more years, perhaps in• deals with real vessels. It goes beyond the cluding replicas of historic ships like the theoretical and centres on the actual construc• Kieler cog or the Endeavour, launched recent• tion features found on extant archaeological ly in Fremantle, Australia. specimens or existing modem vessels. The thirty-one papers in the publication Lars U. Scholl have been organized into three sections: Bremerhaven, Germany Historical Development, Local Craft, and Short Reports on Current Research. The Reinder Reinders and Kees Paul (eds.). Carvel chronological arrangement of the papers on Construction Technique: Fifth International Historical Development provides an evol• Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, utionary perspective on the subject. Whether Amsterdam 1988. Oxbow Monograph 12; by design or accident, the four papers on Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1991. 194 pp., fig• Dutch vessels (Green, Oosting, Hoving and ures, photographs, maps. US $42, paper; Gawronski) were grouped together to form a ISBN 0-946897-34-4. Distributed in Canada coherent sub-section that highlights develop• and the United States by David Brown Book ments from a single geographic region. A Company, Bloomington, IN. similar grouping is found for a number of papers on Roman boatbuilding although the This book presents the proceedings from the geographical spread is much larger. Leh• Fifth ISBSA Symposium and focuses on mann's paper on variations in Roman boat• carvel building techniques, although clinker building suffers from a difficult translation building practices are also covered. The book, while Arnold's contribution on the Bevaix as a whole, considers the problem of the tran• boat is nearly incomprehensible. On the other sition from shell-first to frame-first construc• hand, Hôckman presents an interesting case tion techniques and when, where, why and for the mass production of Roman Danube how this might have occurred. The subject vessels. matter is vast geographically, chronologically Many of the papers offer mainly straight• and typologically. The focus is clearly Euro• forward technical descriptions of the vessels pean but there are contributions bearing on under study; a few go further and advance the the Mediterranean, North and South America field with significant insights derived from as well as Australia.

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